Juniper
by lollipop-mania
Summary: She had promised to always stay by his side, but promises don't always last, do they? A drabble series written off a 30 day prompt. RoArr. Updated Daily!
1. Beginning

_Juniper_

a/n: this is from a 30 Day Drabble prompt on tumblr. I'll update here and on Ao3 as often as possible!

the words are taken in order. Slight AU.

…...

_beginning_

The sky had turned an ashen grey and in the distance, a roll of thunder crashed over the mountain tops. He didn't hear everything that was said. No man could. And He was just a man. Their father, yes. Their creator, yes. But only a man nonetheless. And when they spoke, secret whispers in corridors and looks passed among their thrones, He didn't know. But someone was always listening, always watching.

And so he had followed her down here. Down upon the naked earth, no other being in sight. Only trees and dirt and sky. In their true forms, they stood as tall as the mountains, each step a tremble against the ground.

Arriane stood with her arms by her sides; yards of space kept them apart. They had never been particularly close. He was her brother, and though that went a very long way, she had thousands of them, and he was just one more. But he was Daniel's friend, had fought beside him on more than one occasion, and Arriane trusted Daniel. And so, she trusted Roland.

But she had not brought him down here. She had not asked him for this. She had simply come down for a moment. He was the one who had followed.

"You still have faith, don't you?" She asked slowly, wind whipping dark tendrils of hair back around her neck.

"Faith in who? Our father?"

"Who else?"

Roland's eyes widened in surprise. "How could I not? Do you not?"

Arriane turned her gaze to angle at the ground below. "I never said such a thing."

"No," he countered, growing heated. "But you certainly implied it."

"I did nothing of the sort!" Her nostrils flared in the silence before Arriane cast her eyes back to the sky as another roll of thunder echoed. She took a long breath and quieted herself. "You've heard the whispers, Roland."

"They are only whispers."

"There are spies among us. Spies! We are children of the Creator, _His_ warrior's. And He does not trust us."

Roland's fists clenched and his throat bobbed. There was pounding in his ears much louder than any thunder threatening the sky. She wasn't right. She couldn't be. Yes, he'd heard the whispers. He'd heard them among the ones he trusted. He'd heard them among the others. But that meant nothing.

"How do you have blind faith in a man you have never even met?" Arriane continued slowly. "A man who gives us orders we must follow without question, who treats us as sions rather than sons; who we must serve without sight and trust without truth? He denies us all the pleasure He gives mankind. Why do we suffer when our only crime is doing His will?"

Roland took a step forward, bruising the ground and quaking the earth with his mass. "Stop it, Arriane." He demanded, loud and echoing. "You are beginning to sound like _him._"

"Lucifer did not doubt," Arriane whispered thickly, leaning back as Roland grabbed her wrist with heated force. "He only disobeyed."

"And you?"

Arriane looked at the ground again, breath coming in heavy, low pants. After a beat, her eyes shot up to lock onto his. "I doubt."

Roland's hand clenched tighter. "_Don't._" He said mechanically. "Always have faith."

She stared at him a moment longer, asking him everything and telling him nothing. And then a moment later, with a burst of pure white light, she was gone and Roland stood alone in an empty land. A dozen rain drops fell upon his shoulders and his wings instinctively moved to cover his torso. After a moment of thought, he removed his wings and expanded them sideways to open his body to the coming monsoon.

He had told her to have faith, but she had given him doubt. And like he was warned, once seeded, it began to grow. Not even the rain could wash him clean.

…...

I kind of like the idea of Arriane being the one to doubt God before Roland did, kind of planting the idea in his head, although he was the one who chose to fall first.

_quick notes on the story:_

I plan on making this in order and somewhat AU. I'm not going to involve Tess or Rosalie or any of that. And my use of Christian Mythology in this story will probably be different from the use of it in the books. This scene was inspired by that awesome Anna/Castiel scene in supernatural. Baby.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Please review and I'll post the next one soon!


	2. Accusation

_Juniper_

a/n: i think this pairing/book in general needs a bigger fandom. i'd imagine this one takes place a good while after the previous chapter. roland-centric.

...

_accusation_

His heart burned. Sweat oozed from his pores, glistening over his brown skin; curving along the lines of woven muscle, creeping into the crevices the lines of his body created. Temptation was raw. And he had doubted. Doubted-for _years _now.

But it was only now that he sinned.

The woman he had chosen was not special. She most beautiful in her village, yes, but not anything so tempting to urge him to bend. She wasn't. She was exciting, with tanned skin and long dark hair and eyes as bright as the sun. When she laughed, the sound echoed around the caves her people inhabited, bringing joy and light to anyone around her. They all admired her. The strongest men attempted to woo her. The women heeded her word. She was a queen.

And she had been a virgin.

He had ruined her as much as she had ruined him.

He'd been watching her every now and then since her birth. He had wondered how different her life would be from his. How humane and beautiful while his was only subservient. Roland was not an independent thinker. He was neither arrogant nor proud. But he doubted the will-the existence, even-of his father.

And that consistent, anxious, clawing of doubt had led him to sin.

He had fallen to temptation. It was not her that had tempted him, she had merely been his pick. It was the thought of sex. The temptation and urge and need and desperate arousal that left him wanting and weary. He had already broken word by doubting. He had continued to break it when his hands had wandered beneath the tiers of robes that covered his form. It wasn't necessarily worse to take a woman than it was to taint oneself by ones own hands, but now he couldn't condone his actions to misleading thoughts. He couldn't act as though his sins were only in his mind. Now there was proof. There was proof that he had gone against his own law.

He wondered, briefly, if anyone knew he was here. If any of his brothers had watched him ravage the young woman upon her bed. Would he not be allowed back into heaven? Had he already fallen, now? Would Arriane realize that this was her fault? Would they all realize that he didn't regret?

Roland sat on a stone on the edge of the bedroom, his elbows resting on his knees. His clothing on the floor beneath his feet.

He didn't regret it. He didn't want to atone; to seek forgiveness and be allowed to live in the Kingdom of Heaven once again.

He knew, then, that he would rather stay and divulge into all the decadence and euphoria that defined _sin_.

With one last look at his partner resting quietly behind him, Roland stepped through the stones and into the crescenting dawn. With little thought, he found himself able to disappear back into his homeland. He hadn't been expelled yet. No one knew of his betrayal, yet. But it was no matter. Roland knew any accusation was futile. He didn't know how much longer he could pretend to be… _good_.

He wasn't. He didn't know when-it might have been the previous night or possibly years before that-but somewhere along the line, Roland had lost his faith.

It wasn't just doubt and sin anymore. It was cold and hard and irrevocably resilient. He didn't question the existence of his Father. He just didn't believe in His intentions.

...

notes: wow the rest of them will probably not be as dark as the last two, actually probably more fluffy.

reviews are always very appreciated! thank you!


	3. Restless

_Juniper_

a/n: thank you for the reviews! this one is the last one that takes place in heaven.

…

_restless_

If there was one thing Arriane didn't like, it was the sky in heaven. It had never been an issue, she knew, until she had first come down to the earth. Heaven didn't have what one would call a _sky_, although, this is technically how it was referred to.

But unlike the earth, there was no sun. No passing of bright or dark. No day, no night. There was just a golden-gray ceiling where the _sky _should have been. There was no sense of passing time when there was no sense of sun. Arriane thought the sky was beautiful. And so, over time, she thought that heaven was, for all intents and purposes, ugly.

"You have mud in your hair."

Arriane didn't need to turn her head to know who it was. Although she hadn't seen him quite as often these days, she certainly had grown quite used to his presence.

"Strong observation" she said pointedly, tapping her toe into the clear blue water below. The spring was unusually quiet and the insertion of her toe disrupted the water. "I was swimming."

"I can tell," Roland said, coming to sit beside her on the edge. He lifted his robes and dropped his soft feet into the water. He sat there for a moment, kicking the water around his ankles lightly. "Is it nice?"

"Very," Arriane commented lowly, "this is the nicest time to go for a swim."

"Now?"

"Yes," she said, leaning forward to draw her fingers over the water , close but not touching. "Most of mankind sleep now, as the sun falls in the sky and the moon takes over." A whisper arose in the waves and they brushed against her feet a little brisker. "I think it would be nice to sleep. We do it far too sporadically."

Roland glanced at her and then sighed, leaning back on his hands.

"I'm sorry," she said slowly, after the silence had gone on too long. "About what I said the last time we were on earth."

It wasn't the last time _he_ had been on earth, but he said nothing.

"I wasn't thinking very straight," she continued. "I am sorry for putting you in any sort of inappropriate position. I should have kept my thoughts to myself."

What could Roland say? That he too doubted? That he too had questioned the faith? That he no longer even believed in it?

"I was being unreasonable," Arriane went on, "and I thank you for keeping my worries to yourself. I cannot imagine the degree of punishment I would find have if anyone were to know."

Again, Roland didn't speak. He only covered her hand with his own, bigger and warmer, one.

"Sometimes I watch them sleep," she said after a while, more to herself than to him, "but when I don't, I like to come here and swim."

"A nice distraction," he replied, "I'd think."

"It is." Arriane pulled her feet from the water and stood on the pavilion beside him. Her fingers wandered deftly to her hip, working themselves against the leather ropes that held her clothing in place. Her tunic billowed around her waist and hips now, and her fingers latched onto the end to lift it over her head.

"Arriane-" Roland said quickly and sharply as soon as he saw her intention.

"Let's go."

He turned his head to the side, heat rising to his face as she bared her upper body. "You should cover yourself," he ground out. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see her uncorking the laced back of her trousers. "Please."

"Tell me, Roland," she said casually, "when you swim, do you always wear your clothing?"

"When I am in the presence of women, yes."

Arriane smiled to herself. "I am an angel, not a woman," she replied, beginning to pull down her bottoms. "It's just a body, Roland," she chided, "We've only been covering them for a few centuries. You've seen me naked thousands of times before." She huffed when he still refused to look at her. She waited a beat and then turned to the water and took a swan dive into the spring. "Get over it, Ro." She said sharply as she surfaced.

He'd never heard the nickname before. For some reason he couldn't quite explain, it excited him. Standing, Roland quickly shed his clothes and jumped into the water after her.

…

please review! thanks for all the support!


	4. Snowflake

_Juniper_

a/n: takes place after the fall, arriane-centric.

…...

_snowflake_

Winter didn't exist in heaven. Seasons didn't change. Hot and cold were concepts, not realities.

She had been lucky, to some extent.

Arriane shivered, closing her hands over her forearms. She had never _really _been cold before. When she had her full powers, she had been resilient and impenetrable to any weather. But now she was freezing. She wouldn't die from it, she knew, but the cold biting at her bones was torturous.

The wind swept past her, cutting into her cheeks and hollowing out her skin. She wasn't sure how long she had been out. Maybe moments, maybe decades.

It was still winter though, and it had been winter when she had fallen.

Perhaps it _had _only been moments that she had been unconscious. She had hit the ground at full speed, cratering a hole that miners wouldn't even be able to dig for centuries. Waking up with a mouth full of earth and a broken nose and cheekbone had been the least of her worries. It was easy to clean a mouth, easier to heal bones. Climbing out was the hard part. Had she been in her true form, she might have been as tall as the hole, bigger even, but now she was only halfway between five and six feet, _maybe, _and crawling wasn't going to be easy.

It had taken her two days and several ripped off nails to remember that she might possibly still have use of her wings.

They weren't a large as they had been, and in the hole, she could only open them so much, but it was enough to fly her up a few feet at a time. She was out before dusk.

But now it was midnight, four days afterward, and she was struggling through the terrain as the beginnings of a blizzard began to brew. She was only lucky she hadn't fallen during the time when ice had caked the earth. At least now there was more civilization and a much greater chance of survival; or at least, a less torturous survival that took the elements into little account.

Though, Arriane had no idea where this civilization was. She knew the layout of the nations like the back of her hand; after all, she'd had a fair amount of eternity to study them as they grew, but she had no inclination of where she had fallen. She had looked for the others. There were dozens of them that had fallen with her. And before that, when the whispers began, there had been dozens that Michael had cast down, some because of doubt, others because of betrayal.

Arriane doubted. She hadn't betrayed. Maybe the others had, maybe that was why they hadn't fallen with her.

She had been musing on this thought for minutes now, considering and denying alternatively. But the wind was gushing towards her harder than before, and though she thought she could hear something behind the howling of the wind-above the shaking of her body and the chattering of her teeth-she didn't have enough to strength to make it out. With one last shaky step, her knees fell to the ground and the world went black.

When Arriane awoke, she was in a dim, candlelit room surrounded by voices. She blinked warily and must have let out some sort of noise because suddenly the room had gone silent and four adults were standing over her.

"Hello?" One of the men said, "are you awake?"

Arriane felt weak and worn, but she managed a nod.

"Don't worry," said someone else, this time an elderly woman, "some of the townspeople found you as they were closing the gates. You were barely alive. But you're save now. We'll take good care of you."

"Where are you from?" The first man asked. "Do you have a name?"

"These are the finest materials I have ever seen," said another voice. Slowly, Arriane turned her head sideways to see a young man holding her clothes between his fingers. "None of the other tribes have material as finely woven as this," he said again.

"Melot," the first man snapped, "put those down."

Arriane was vaguely aware that she must not be in her clothes, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Regardless, although every bone in her body ached and her head pounded, making the force of keeping her eyes open a burden, she no longer felt cold, and figured they had made her at least somewhat decent.

"What is your name?" Asked the third man, this one also standing above her. "Where is your family?"

"She doesn't have any," the last person above her said, this time a very attractive woman, her red hair braided with gold. The light caught on it, making her head glow as though she was wearing a halo, even with the wrinkles just beginning to line her face.

"How do you know?" Inquire the third man.

"Because," the woman commented, brushing a hand over Arriane's forehead before moving to cup her cheek gently, "no family would leave their daughter to die in the cold, so far from their home."

"But these clothes-" Melot interrupted.

"It is none of our business," the woman soothed, running a thumb over Arriane's lower lip before moving away. She stepped out of Arriane's line of sight. "Make her well," she said to the elderly woman, who nodded. "When she is feeling better, we will move her into the castle. She is under our protection now."

"Yes m'lady," the elderly woman agreed, giving a slow bow as the other three members of the room left.

…...

again, thanks for the reviews!


	5. Haze

_Juniper_

a/n: several years later

…

_haze_

Arriane's glare was hard, and she kept it burning until she knew he would feel the ache. Mechanically and swiftly, as though he knew exactly who was looking at him, Roland glanced up.

His golden eyes were as widened and his lips parted in surprise.

Slowly, and without a word, he stood from his bow. His lips formed her name, but now noise came out.

"That knight seems to be interested in you," Maeda whispered, pointing. Quickly, her mother pushed Maeda's arm down.

"That is rude."

"I bet he just want's to get under Arr's skirts," Melot whispered loud enough for Arriane, Maeda, and most likely Roland, to hear. Which was probably laid very purposefully.

"Ugh, shut up!" Maeda snapped, elbowing her brother.

"Children," their mother said lowly, "we are in company, _behave_."

Both of them stopped, but Arriane had barely registered a word. It was as though a haze had been cast over entire proceeding. Every other knight in the lands was in front of her now, along with all royalty, not to mention a good portion of the townsfolk; but none of it mattered.

Roland was here.

_Here_.

She'd never thought she'd see him again. And even if she rationally supposed she _might_, she had certainly never thought she'd see him here; here in her lands.

After the fall, she had searched for miles from her landing sight, flying through the night where she might not get caught and possibly hunted. She had landed in strange lands and asked the citizens if they had found anyone fitting any description she gave. She had looked for Roland and Annabelle and Cameron and them _all_.

But they had fallen without a trace, and she had no idea where to begin.

She had stopped searching for them after a year, and since then, had pretty much abandoned all hope. After all, she was a ward of the king and queen, she couldn't just continue to go searching for friends that very possibly no longer existed. They all fallen from the same place, and naturally, they all should have shared a similar trajectory and landed in the same place. But they hadn't. ANd she had assumed the worst.

But here he was, standing in full leather regalia that the foreign knights from the eastern tribes wore.

Roland stood from his crouched bow along with the rest of his men, lips beginning to turn up in a smile and his eyes leaving Arriane's after giving her something that somewhat resembled a wink.

…


	6. Flame

_Juniper_

a/n: in this story, arriane never went into the church.

…...

_flame_

"I was found by the prince," Arriane said, the pads of her fingers pressing against the stone that made up the tower walls. "I collapsed a few miles from the town. He found me and brought me here. I am a ward of the king; have been for seven years now."

Roland said nothing, staring out into the night. He was leaning his elbows on the wall, eyes hard.

"I like it here. More than I expected I would."

There was a hard block in his throat and Roland struggled to swallow it down. His skin had been freshly shaved and the oils he had put on his jaw caused his skin to glow in the reflected light from the one candle Arriane had brought out.

It was late, the hours creeping onto dawn. He had been up here for hours, but she had only come a half-hour before.

"You were lucky," Roland said eventually, his voice dry and low. He didn't continue. She wondered just what he had been doing since the fall, but he gave no inclinations.

Arriane looked at him, but he ignored her inquiry and kept his gaze east. After a moment, she turned back. A breeze pushed past them, sweeping over her exposed skin.

"It is beautiful here," he observed quietly, "it looks as though the hills go on forever."

"It is."

More silence. Then: "you shouldn't have come with me."

Arriane inhaled sharply. "I made a promise."

"It was asking to much of you to keep it."

"You never asked anything of me," she defended slowly. He didn't respond. Arriane sighed, looking back at him. He was being awfully quiet tonight, especially considering the the fact that he had every reason to think she hadn't survived the fall-after all, she had thought so of him. The flame of the candle wavered and the night grew dimmer. "Are you going to stay?"

Roland considered this, and then finally, turned his head to look at her. His hand brushed out and trailed along her neck for an instant before he shut his eyes and took a long, heavy breath. "It's good to see you, Arriane."

...

reviews are love!


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